“Old school” is the way ex-customers describe it. Like the rest of this stretch of East 14th Street, it was slightly seedy but safe, attracting “students, actors, businessmen, and bums” and providing “safe harbor at most hours of the night and morning.”

What brought it down? High rent, of course. According to a New York Times article, it went from $300 a month in 1933 to $6,000 in 1987.

”I don’t know what I will do when my lease is up in four years,” the 53-year-old owner [Ron (Julian) Hickers] said as he looked out the window at a luxury apartment building rising across East 14th Street. ”I may just hang it up and go to Florida.”